By Virginia Winder
A masked man hides behind bushes.
He is waiting and watching as a man on a horse trots towards him along Mangorei Road.
The sound of clopping gets closer. Dust sprouts from the horse's hooves.
When the rider nears the bush, the masked man leaps out waving a gun and yells:
"Halt! I demand your money, or I will put a bullet through your brains!"
The terrified horseman hands over a few coins and gallops away into New Plymouth.
The disguised robber jumps on his own horse and gallops out of town.
News of this daylight robbery spreads throughout Taranaki and people are frightened to leave their homes.
They are frightened of the masked man they have nicknamed "the Highwayman".
This is a real story that happened more than 100 years ago, way before cars buzzed up and down Mangorei Road. It was even before streetlights came to New Plymouth and before telephones.
This is the world the Highwayman rode into on that Easter Monday in 1892.
After that first hold-up, the mystery man began appearing all over the place.
He held up lots of men, asking for money.
One night, the Highwayman stopped a man walking across the Te Henui bridge.
Scene of Crime: This is Te Henui Bridge, New Plymouth, where the Highwayman did some of his hold-ups.
"The money or your life," he yelled.
"I have no money, friend. I am a poor working man," the victim said.
"You may go. I don't interfere with working men," the lawbreaker replied.
Because he wouldn't steal from the poor, New Plymouth people began to see the Highwayman differently. They thought he was a bit like Robin Hood, who only took from the rich.
The Highwayman was also a trickster.
One night after he held-up a man in the city, he took off his famous mask, red coat, dark trousers with a red stripe down the legs, his small, round, tight-fitting cap, put down his sword and revolver. He hid his disguise and then wandered back into the centre of town.
There, he found a crowd of people talking about the Highwayman.
He acted surprised and asked lots of questions about the hold-up. "What means this excitement? Is someone hurt?"
In the distance, he watched police and searchers ride off on horses looking for the criminal. They looked like cowboys chasing an outlaw.
The Highwayman grinned to himself as he smoked a cigar. In his head he thought: "Brave men, no doubt, but your enemy was behind you, meek as a lamb and smiling."
Another bold hold-up happened on 11 February 1893.
That night the Highwayman walked into the White Hart Hotel. He strode up to the barman and demanded: "Bail up, give me money, for money I'll have."
The barman and the customers thought the hold-up was a joke.
So the masked bandit pointed his pistol at the barman, and said: "Stand aside or I'll blow your brains out."
He got away with a small sum of money and some silver.
Barman Bailed Up: New Plymouth's White Hart Hotel was the site of another robbery.
Still nobody knew who the masked man was... until one dark night.
On 20 July 1893, he strode into the Criterion Hotel at closing time.
He asked a woman behind the bar for money.
But she and a customer thought the robber was joking and told him to leave.
So he did. The villain wasn't the type to go about frightening women.
When the Highwayman walked out of the hotel, two men tackled him. As the scoundrel fell to the ground his gun went off.
The bullet hit one of the men, wounding his arm. He was not badly hurt and recovered in hospital.
But the outlaw was caught like a rugby player diving for the tryline.
A crowd of people stood around the covered criminal, who was pinned to the ground.
Holding a candle up for light, the owner of the hotel pulled off the mask.
There lay a young carpenter called Robert Wallath. He was only 20 years old.
The people of New Plymouth were shocked that this nice young man was the terrifying Highwayman.